HEADLINES: Refugees

LIRS Blog April 19th, 2012

China has stopped sending fleeing North Koreans back across the border in retaliation for North Korea’s failure to consult its ally over last week’s rocket launch, a Japanese report said Wednesday. Two Chinese officials have been quoted as saying the long-standing policy of swiftly returning any North Korean who made it across the border and into China — despite the punishment they face — had been put on hold. “If refugees are sent back, that’s the end of their lives. We can’t ignore it,” one official in Liaoning province, which borders North Korea, told a Japanese paper, adding that deportations had been halted. [AFP]

Life is starting to look more permanent for the Syrian refugees in Kilis. There are no tents in the Turkish camp. Instead, thousands of white cubicles sit in endless rows. Back in Syria, security forces and rebels have mostly stuck to a ceasefire imposed on April 12 through a deal brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan. The United Nations is now discussing sending in a small monitoring mission to observe the truce. However, with every grey brick laid along the paths that criss-cross the sea of container houses, the displaced express feeling further from returning home across the border. Even as diplomats debate ceasefires and the deployment of monitors to calm Syria’s streets, the builders of Kilis seem to think Syrian refugees are in for a long haul. Three large yellow schools are being constructed. Two mosques with blue minarets and stained glass windows mark either end of the camp. “This is not a camp, this is a city. Next month you will see a different world here, like a dream city,” says Suphi Atan, a Turkish Foreign Ministry official who oversees the Syrian refugee camps. [Reuters]

A pair of Cleveland nonprofits has come together to address two vexing problems: the flood of vacant homes languishing in the wake of the foreclosure crisis — an inventory estimated at about ten million properties nationwide — and the need for decent, affordable housing for refugees arriving in America. The International Services Center, a nonprofit that has resettled close to 13,000 refugees over the last half century, stumbled on the idea of making use of foreclosed homes last summer, as it grappled with a stark shortage of available housing. Caseworkers were having difficulty finding acceptable homes for newly arrived families because landlords were reluctant to rent to refugees. [Huffington Post]